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- Hacker News
- No worries, they'll evolve again. Like crab-form, it has happened multiple times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saber-toothed_predator#Evoluti...by morkalork
- Another predator that went through a genetic choke point. Cheetahs did, too.[1] Cheetahs survived, but they are so similar genetically that they get the same illnesses, and skin grafts between unrelated cheetahs are not rejected.
[1] https://academic.oup.com/jhered/article/108/6/671/3836924
by Animats - I was always puzzled how these cats actually fed. These sabre toots seem to get in the way of feeding and chewing.by NL807
- I know I'd certainly be discouraged from feeding if I got the sabre toots.by zarflax
- > These sabre toots seem to get in the way of feeding and chewing.
Why? They don't stop the mouth from closing. Presumably they don't stop it from opening either.
Compare walruses, elephants, and pigs.
by thaumasiotes - Cats don't really chew much anyway. If sabre-tooths have a rough tongue like other cats, they can probably scour flesh off bones with that with little need to work over the meat with their teeth.by t-3
- There's a video on YouTube by a paleontologist giving his own theory for why sabre-tooth cats had these teeth which would be more hindrance then help in the kind of use most people imagine for them. Fossils show they couldn't open their jaws wide enough to use these teeth in stabbing fashion, except on something very thin.
The theory is that the sabre-tooths evolved to specialize in feeding on long-necked camelids (camel family) and the teeth evolved to let them deliver a fatal slicing bite to the neck. The sabre-tooths teeth fit neatly between the neck vertebra of a camelid, and have serated edges to let them slice through the tissue - the teeth are made for slicing, not stabbing (edit: as much as specialized stabbing).
Being so specialized they likely went extinct when their prey did (for whatever reason).
- I think the study makes a giant presumptive leap to assume inbreeding was the cause of the higher-than-modern-human incidences of spinal tumors. It's irresponsible to assert this to be true instead of one of several possible explanations.by chrisco255
- Yep. For instance it could be from higher cosmic ray penetration into the earth during the last geomagnetic excursion.by webdoodle
- Seems like there's also a sampling bias, where the less able-bodied animals are more likely to get trapped in tar for scientists to study.by Retr0id
- The study and the summary do not "assume" that the cause was inbreeding. They both assert that inbreeding could be a cause.
The article says "The team suspects these deformities and tumors indicate a lengthy history of inbreeding".
The paper abstract says "possibly because of an accumulation of expressed deleterious alleles that caused disturbances in developmental processes".
It's perfectly ok for scientists to write down and publish their speculation, as long as it's suffiently clear. I think it's quite clear in this case.
by icegreentea2 - Wouldn't it make sense to assume that as the size of the population decreases, perhaps for external factors such as climate change, you are going to see more and more inbreeding?by litoE
- If you watch predator behavior, they will always go for an easy kill. The tar pit provides those opportunities. Also, if these opportunities are routine enough and occur in a hyper local area, it’s hardly even hunting they become more like scavengers patrolling the area and perhaps defending it from competition.
That said, it seems more likely to me cats near the tar pits just held the territory and became inbred from that. You can see similar patterns today around a junk yard. There will be feral dogs or cats that are living off the trash. They protect it from outsiders and inbreed.
That’s if inbred is even the explanation. I think it’s also possible that weak or deformed cats may just prefer this site more than healthy cats as they are hungry enough to take the risk. So the population bias is inherently there through attendance. If cats are getting stuck in tar so frequently, it’s likely they knew going near it was risky. Healthy cats would hunt elsewhere and avoid the risk.
by conductr - Also handicapped (by age or birth) individuals in nature are always squeezed into subpar territories where they then wither and sucumb
- Tar pits are full of remains of many types of predators, not just saber tooth cats, after all.by asdff